Word: elizabeth
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Mitchell was a local, born and raised just a few miles from Elizabeth Smart. A so-so student at Skyline High School, he lost himself in hobbies like model rocketry before launching himself into drugs and alcohol. At 19 he married and had two kids with a woman named Karen, but the two split up. Soon afterward, he became active in the Mormon church. There he met Debbie, whom he married in 1980. According to Debbie, the David Mitchell she fell in love with was a gentle, deeply devout man. But she says he soon became controlling; he banned bright...
...Mitchell allegedly came calling once more, on the evening of June 5, 2002, when he cut a hole in a window screen in the Smarts' kitchen. He plucked Elizabeth at knifepoint from the bedroom she shared with her sister. Who knows whether Elizabeth recognized the man who had worked once on her family's house and now led her through her backyard up into the Wasatch Mountains. Police say the trio spent its first three months camped in the maze of gullies and canyons just a few miles from the Smarts' home...
...Elizabeth was so close she could even hear rescuers, including her uncle, calling out her name. Chief Dinse said last week Elizabeth had suffered a "strong psychological impact" that may have overwhelmed any impulse to escape. Having secured his first new bride, Mitchell made a move for another. Police suspect that on the evening of July 24, he climbed atop a chair and carved a hole in the screen of the bedroom window of Jessica Wright, Elizabeth's 18-year-old cousin...
...time, though, police thought they had already nabbed their man: Richard Ricci, another former handyman to the Smart family, with a 30-year rap sheet, who had inexplicably logged more than 500 miles on his Jeep Cherokee in the days just following Elizabeth's disappearance. Arrested on June 24 for an unrelated parole violation, Ricci denied any involvement in the Smart kidnapping. He would not get a chance to prove his innocence. On Aug. 27, he suffered a brain hemorrhage in his jail cell and died three days later...
Around this time, the trio vacated its mountain hideaway. And as the Smarts continued to hold twice-daily press briefings about their missing daughter, Elizabeth and her captors began living openly in the streets of downtown Salt Lake. With their eccentric dress--all three wore billowy robes, and the women adorned their heads with burqa-like coverings--the threesome was hard to ignore and at times seemed to flagrantly court attention. On Sept. 27, Mitchell had the first of two brushes with law enforcement when he was picked up for shoplifting batteries, gum, a flashlight and a beer from...